The absolute worst film you've ever seen

[CommanderTrip]

This just motivated me to watch The Fifth Element again.

TBH, I would say some of the original comments mentioned toward "The Fifth Element" might apply more toward "Valerian: and the City of a Thousand Planets" (same director, Luc Besson). I ordered that movie on 3D blu ray from overseas so I could experience it at home. The trailers looked amazing. Then as I watched the movie, it just kind of went from visual spectacle to visual spectacle with very little charm. A quality I find in abundance in "The Fifth Element. The chemistry between the leads of Valerian was kinda meh compared to Bruce Willis, Mia Wilkilovich (sp?) Chris Tucker, and Gary Oldman."

 

[Gary Mitchell]

^Milla Jovovich.

 

[Push The Button]

Grilled (2006) - Kevin James and Ray Romano are meat salesmen.

Just awful. I'm a big fan of Kevin James, but I lasted about 30 minutes before having to turn it off.

 

[Caleuche]

I've only walked out of the cinema twice, the first for Multiplicity with Michael Keaton, as it just wasn't funny to the point it was offensive and the second was Cloud Atlas. I think what makes Cloud Atlas so annoying is it should have been good - it had enormous potential - the Wachowskis direct Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whitshaw in a multi-country, multi-time period epic which says something deeply profound about the Human condition. It decided instead to be a long, convoluted, confused mess which appeared to have the actors making it up as they went along (and doing their own make-up and wardrobe). Whatever the movie was trying to say was mumbled in a language I didn't understand.

Actually, having just wrote Hugo Weaving, I can think of a movie that he was in that was worse. Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. I tried to stick with it for my friends sake, but somewhere amongst the annoying parents appearing in random locations and the jokes about robots scrotums, I lost interest (and the will to live). I got to the point I was so bored, I started de-lacing and re-lacing my shoes, just so I had something to do.

On the other hand, Fifth Element is one of the greatest films of all times...

 

[PureCrimson]

Cloud Atlas is your typical Wachowskis film: it thinks it's so much smarter than it really is.

 

[arch101]

Dancer in the Dark. A Bjork vehicle that my ex wife thought was going to be SO good she just had to BUY it sight unseen. We watched it. It was truly headache inducing. Went right in the wastebasket.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I'd say that about most of the script, to be honest. A lot of it was pointless spectacle.

At least it was enjoyable to some degree or at least watchable, which was not the case for Chris Tucker. He was sort of the Jar Jar Binks of TFE.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Then there was Laserblast - basically a 16mm student film that got a theatrical release. . . . The plot was a teenager finds an alien laser cannon that grafts itself to his arm. He goes on a killing rampage, slowly turning into a zombie-faced monster.

I remember that one getting some coverage in Starlog, and possibly showing up in one of their "guidebook" special issues (the one on SF weapons, maybe?)

Battlefield Earth.. Ohh dear lord where can I even start...
And yes, I paid $7 to see that cinematic suppository on opening night..

You were expecting something good to come out of L. Ron Hubbard?

Okay, I have another contender: THE BRIDE (1985) starring Sting and Jennifer Beals, an excruciatingly dull remake of THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN that seems to go on forever.

"Seems to go on forever" can be a good thing. Like in the big harpsichord cadenza in the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto of Bach. If it's done right, it makes you wish it actually did go on forever.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Yeah, Laserblast was covered in Starlog, both in the guidebooks and in the magazine proper, IIRC. I saw it once, and all I remember was that it was awful.

 

[marillion]

At least it was enjoyable to some degree or at least watchable, which was not the case for Chris Tucker. He was sort of the Jar Jar Binks of TFE.

I didn't realize there was so much dislike for TFE. I Love just about every bit of this movie, especially Chris Tucker's portrayal. And for the record, I hate Jar Jar. LOL...

As for the worst movie I've ever seen... I've seen a LOT of stinkers thanks to cable and the net, but if we're talking about actual in-theater? Probably the worst I've ever seen was Biohazard.... It was one of those "there's nothing else showing this week, so let's give it a shot" kind of a thing and it was horrible... A close second is Highlander II... But I mostly hate that movie for what they did to ruin what was so good about the first movie.

 

[Greg Cox]

"Virus" with Donald Sutherland and Jamie Lee Curtis was so bad I fell asleep in the movies

This is where I cop to editing the novelization of that movie. (Yes, there was a novelization.)

Never got around to seeing the actual film.

 

[Kor]

I find Starcrash to be much more terrible than Battle Beyond the Stars.

To this day, I cannot believe Christopher Plummer signed on for that piece of garbage. Maybe he was expecting that it would take off like Star Wars and that he would gain a new audience like Alec Guinness?

Kor

 

[tharpdevenport]

I don't hate TFE, I just hate Chris Tucker's character.

Well, no, I hate that wobbling cat meowing (not kidding) that Eric Serra put into one score cue.

I like the weird world it created, the quirkiness of it, the score, even the song in the end credits, the weird villain that is Zorg, the general premise, and most o the humor.

 

[Greg Cox]

To this day, I cannot believe Christopher Plummer signed on for that piece of garbage. Maybe he was expecting that it would take off like Star Wars and that he would gain a new audience like Alec Guinness?

According to Wikipedia:

Plummer said of the filming, "Give me Rome any day. I'll do porno in Rome, as long as I can get to Rome. Getting to Rome was the greatest thing that happened in that for me. I think it was only about three days in Rome on that one. It was all shot at once". .

Honestly, somebody offered me a working vacation to Rome just to shoot a movie with Caroline Munro . . .

"What time does my flight leave?"

 

[XCV330]

Absolute worst movie I've ever seen would be a toss-up between "Manos The Hands of Fate" and "Birdemic". Either one makes "The Room" look like a dignified Merchant Ivory drama. Of those three, The Room is watchable because you keep asking yourself unanswerable questions about the bizarre script and filming process, only deepened if you read Disaster Artist. Birdemic is slightly, on its own, because of the bargain basement animated-Gif special affects. Stripped of wacky robot heads at the bottom of the screen, Manos is unwatchable.

The problem with all three of those is they were produced/funded/directed by first time amateurs with extremely limited theater runs, so in some minds they may not count. Of a large budget, non-monster, movie that I actually saw, I would say Heaven's Gate. It's a terrible movie that seems to hate the audience more than the audience soon learns to hate it. It may violate the standard model of the universe as I am pretty sure time slows down when you sit down to watch it (I only did once, never would again). Want bizarre scenes of people harvesting grain or something in the middle of the night backlight by studio floodlights that seemingly never ends? Got that. Want a plot that is so badly thought out and convoluted you have no idea what the move is about 5 minutes into it, and still dont know or care at the end? Can do! Do you prefer tour wester/pioneer era films to have 20 minutes worth the roller rink scenes? Of course you do. Of course you do. I think this movie actually killed an entire studio.

 

[Greg Cox]

The problem with all three of those is they were produced/funded/directed by first time amateurs with extremely limited theater runs, so in some minds they may not count. Of a large budget, non-monster, movie that I actually saw, I would say Heaven's Gate. It's a terrible movie that seems to hate the audience more than the audience soon learns to hate it. It may violate the standard model of the universe as I am pretty sure time slows down when you sit down to watch it (I only did once, never would again). Want bizarre scenes of people harvesting grain or something in the middle of the night backlight by studio floodlights that seemingly never ends? Got that. Want a plot that is so badly thought out and convoluted you have no idea what the move is about 5 minutes into it, and still dont know or care at the end? Can do! Do you prefer tour wester/pioneer era films to have 20 minutes worth the roller rink scenes? Of course you do. Of course you do. I think this movie actually killed an entire studio.

There's a great book about all the behind-the-scenes drama on that movie: FINAL CUT.

 

[suarezguy]

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. I compare the experience unfavourably to having one’s ears syringed by a trainee doctor with a hangover, with a hangover.

I think even while slumming Kidder, Hackman and Reeve are pretty nice.

I actually sat through about an hour of the legendarily bad Plan 9 from Outer Space -- watched it with some friends on a mutual dare when it ran on one of those local Saturday-afternoon creature-feature programs. An hour was all any of us could stand. The acting was bad, the effects were horrible, and nothing about it made any sense.

I hope you've seen the great movie it spoofs/rips off (The Day the Earth Stood Still).
I usually don't really mind cheap or even bad special effects.

 

[Owain Taggart]

At least it was enjoyable to some degree or at least watchable, which was not the case for Chris Tucker. He was sort of the Jar Jar Binks of TFE.

I can't stand Chris Tucker overall. He comes across like he wants to be Eddie Murphy on speed. He's one of the main reasons why I could never get into the Rush Hour movies despite me liking Jackie Chan. His high-pitched squeals drive me nuts.

As for Fifth Element, saw it once. I wouldn't say I hate it, but I didn't care for it. Just a solid "Meh" for me.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I can tolerate him on the Rush Hour films. I like that line: "Ewww, you know he dead."

And that concludes, thankfully, everything I've seen him in. His "acting" credits on IMDb are scary.

 

[Forbin]

I suppose there are lots of ways to define "worst": most disappointing, most offensive, most incompetent, most boring, most ridiculous, etc.

Honestly, one of the worst movies I ever saw was a foreign art flick whose title escapes me. A man and a woman meet at a lonely train station in the middle of nowhere. He doesn't speak her language. She doesn't speak his. They glare at each other for days, they fight, they have sex, then one day she gets back on the train and goes away. Who was she? What was her story? He'll never know . . ..

I suppose it was supposed to be a profound meditation on the inability of men and women to truly communicate with each other, but it was mostly 120 minutes of two people glumly not talking to each other in a single, dingy setting, punctuated by bouts of angry sex. Tedious does not begin to describe it . . ...

Speaking of angry sex, I nominate Showgirls as the least sexy film full of hot naked women ever made. Boobs an sex all over the place, and the whole thing turned me off.